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WMU senior wins $2,500 Bridging Scholarship |
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WMU senior wins $2,500 Bridging
Scholarship to study in Japan WMU senior Benjamin Boroughf was recently awarded a $2,500 Bridging Scholarship for Study Abroad in Japan through the US-Japan Bridging Foundation. Boroughf, a 22-year-old native of Orchard Lake, Mich., is one of 13 undergraduate students from colleges and universities across the United States to receive this prestigious award.
The US-Japan Bridging Foundation was formed in 1998 to provide scholarships through the Association of Teachers of Japanese to assist students who desire to study in Japan. Boroughf applied the award, plus a $4,500 WMU President’s Grant for Study Abroad, to his spring semester enrollment at Nihon University in Tokyo. He began his program of study in Japanese language and culture in mid-January, which will conclude March 30.
Boroughf, who is majoring at WMU in English with a minor in philosophy, prepared for his study abroad experience in WMU Japanese language, culture, and literature and translation courses. He said Professor Jeffrey Angles, director of WMU’s Japanese Language Program, encouraged him to apply for a Bridging Scholarship.
“Professor Angles told me this scholarship would help reduce the financial costs of studying in Japan and he handed me some information,” Boroughf said. “I am incredibly elated; I never dreamed I could acquire such a prestigious scholarship. When I received the award letter, I thought, finally, I can go to Japan and study the language to prepare for graduate study and my future endeavors in teaching without having to constantly worry about how I am going to pay for the costs.”
Angles also serves as associate director of WMU’s Michitoshi Soga Japan Center, an educational resource center on Japan-related issues and topics. He said Boroughf is “the kind of student teachers dream of.”
“Ben-san was always prepared to think critically about a work of literature or criticism,” Angles said. “I am proud he won the Bridging Scholarship because it is a national competition that draws applicants from the United States’ most eminent universities.”
WMU offers a Japanese minor, which many students enhance with a language-intensive semester-long or academic-year study abroad experience at the Tokyo-based Daito Bunka University, Keio University, Nihon University and Rikkyo University, or at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto or the Otaru University of Commerce on Hokkaido, the northernmost island of Japan.
A Japan Religion and Culture tour hosted biennially in summer I semester by Dr. Stephen Covell, a WMU Comparative Religion professor and director of the Soga Japan Center, offers students a two-week overview of Japanese religious practices, history and culture in Tokyo and Nikko.
For more information about Study Abroad and related scholarship opportunities, contact the Haenicke Institute for Global Education at 269-387-5890, or visit the Institute’s Study Abroad web page at: www.wmich.edu/studyabroad.
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